Wednesday, 28 April 2010

So...i am a big fan of the ideal of nature taking over once more, something i routinely try to inject into maps. I am a massive fan of the fallout series. But how is the ideal developed.

Something i have been playing with recently is social balance. When a government falls, there is no central control of what the people can and can't do. Historically, law has fallen to the church to enforce through belief systems. Our concept of morality has come from religious beliefs, and is now drilled into our society. As such, the social balance consists of Military, Technology and Belief.

The balance is maintained by factions pulling in different directions, not letting any one faction obtain more power than the other two. Once these factions are realised, then the basics of map planning can begin.

I have worked out that one of the factions i want is a technological faction that worship a Machine God (yes, very wh40k). The structure will be a temple like construction with heavy machinery within.

Friday, 9 April 2010

Welcome to one of my favourite rants...the continued use of NPC's in online games. World of Warcraft is one of those games where people pay 8.99 a month to play a single player game with a chat option. In inclusion on NPC's in an online game is baffling, especially when they encroach on the story.

Now, I do not suggest that the NPC should be completely removed, but changing it's role in an environment could be of benefit. Why should an NPC tell you to collect 40 rolls on fabric from the corpses of dead mammoths, so they can make a pair of trousers for themselves? Of course, you, as a player never see this benefit.

I would love to see NPC's employed by players to add service to towns. So a twon could primerely be inhabited by players, but NPC's are employed to act as shopkeepers, auctioneers or even sent out to run trade routes on the seven seas. Quests can still be handled by npc's, but if someone is employing them, it would seem more important to keep them happy and in shoes.

And, of course if another player starts killing your NPC's, you should have the opportunity to revenge them for increased experience.

Wurm Online (www.wurmonline.com) has a basic version of this, NPC's can be employed to be merchants. Maybe it's time for others to follow suite?

Wednesday, 7 April 2010

Ok, here it goes. This is my first attempt at smooth seamless terrain changes. The trigger for this is a logic_timer with a refire time of 3 seconds. This is linked to a logic_case, with the i/o's telling it to randomise the case. Each case then triggers a logic_relay that contains the instructions for each move. As such, we get this:

Welcome to my blog. Mainly i will be covering concepts, ideas i've been working on, that sort of thing. My alias is usually dark phoenix, iron phoenix or mid_phoenix, or something similar, and i dabble in games design. Recently I have been working with a few concepts of modular rooms. Next post will cover the basics of my findings in Source...portal to be exact.